Ani'ient (told Minino in ttik Sudan 



BY 



Stanley 0. Dunn, F.G.S.. A.R.S.M. 



Sudan Governiucut (Jcolugist. (Tordon Meiiiiiriiil College, Khiirtmim 



Traces of ancient mining are found all over the Sudan north of the 18th parallel of 

 latitude, and there are 85 important old workings which can with certainty be imputed to 

 the Egyptians or the Medieval Arabs prior to the tenth century a.d. It is possible that 

 the climatic conditions were considerably diiferent to those that now exist. The rainfall 

 must have been far greater ; not only are there many wells now dry but traces of reservoirs 

 and even of cultivation, where now one or two storms of rain during the year is the 

 maximum sujjply. Several attempts have been made in the jDast ten years to re-open some 

 of the old workings, but owing to the difficulties of transport and the absence of water in 

 sufficient quantities, only one mine, Om Nabardi, near number six station, is at present 

 being worked. 



I am greatly indebted to Mr. Arthur Llewellyn for his kind permission to utilise the 

 report for the Egypt and Sudan Mining Syndicate, written in 1903. Additional information 

 has been obtained principally from the works of Dr. Wallis Budge, Professor Sayce and 

 Messrs. Breasted and Weigall. 



There is abundant evidence that the mining industry of ancient Egypt covei'ed a most 

 extensive field, and dates from a remote antiquity. 



Mr. Ernest A. Floyer, in a contribution to the .Tourual of the Roijal AdaH.e Society 

 (" The Mines of the Northern Etbai," 1892), after a careful review of the evidence available, 

 concludes that even before the times of the Ancient Egyptians, or in the earliest times _^ primitive 

 contemporary therewith, altliough unknown to them, the mountains between the Nile and "i'"i"g 

 the Red Sea were searched and worked for gold by a people whose chief occupation was 

 mining. It is supposed that these former inhabitants of the Etbai were a negroid race 

 whose descendants at the present day dwell south of Kordofan, and work the copper mines 

 of Hofrat-El-Nahas. 



The Phoenicians visited this ancient people to trade for the gold of the mines before 

 Egyptian oppression had driven them farther south ; and for tlie Egyptian kings there 

 flowed from this source a stream of gold the volume of which, accumulated in the course 

 of centuries, is now beyond conception, enabling them as it did to supply the civilised 

 world. 



The earliest known reference to gold appears to date from the era of Menes, the 

 first historical ruler of Egypt, who is supposed to have reigned about the thirty-eighth 

 century B.C. It is an enactment by which the exchange ratio between silver and gold was 

 fixed at 2^ to 1, thus indicating that even at that far distant date the precious metals 

 were in common use as means of currency. Silver remained the more precious metal 

 until about 2000 B.C. 



Floyer is of opinion that the first mines worked by the Egyptians themselves were 

 in the Sinai Peninsula, and were opened under the rule of Senoferu at the close of the 

 third or beginning of the fourth dynasty, a period contemporaneous witli tlip building 

 of the first pyramids. 



The earliest inscriptions in the mines and quarries of HanmiaiiiiU, in l'|i|icr I'lgypt, 



